Tuesday, August 02, 2005

The Food Debate



I haven't posted for a couple of days, have found it difficult with the relatives around. Have been cooking a lot, but haven't taken a lot of pictures, as my mom thinks it's a weird habit. (she doesn't know about the blog)
This is a picture of a quick raspberry jam that I made to go with a wholemeal sponge cake yesterday.
My Dad is finding British food difficult to analyse. He claims that any processed stuff has a peculiar after taste. Fresh stuff doesn't. We were talking yesterday about the difference in flavour between British beef and American beef. And it does make a difference we are sure (my Dad is a farmer by the way, so this stuff is interesting to both of us). So we decided that:
British:
grass fed (leaner meat)
off of the bone (BSE scare)
not aged very long (BSE scare, but doesn't make sense in terms of good eatin')
different water (water tastes different everywhere or we wouldn't buy bottled from Fiji would we?)

American:
corn fed (allows for a more marbled meat, the fat itself will have more flavour)
on the bone (the marrow adding flavour, is marrow the correct spelling?)
aged, often for 6 weeks (no BSE)

I also thought the harmones and anti-biotics given to american beef would make a difference, but Dad doesn't. He also thinks that animals' growth isn't accelerated as much as folks think.

Murdo watch:
What my Dad does like is my sourdough bread. This pleases me of course. We've gone through 6 loaves in 4 days. It does make great toast with butter and marmite. yummm. I've also made lovely blt's with the bread and dry cured smoked west country bacon. For those of you that don't perhaps know, bacon is one of the greatest things in this country. And something my Dad was actually looking forward to eating again.

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